What is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)?

CBT, or “Cognitive Behaviour Therapy”, is a short-term, structured therapy that has been designed from extensive research and has been found to be highly effective for children, teens and adults.

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) helps people recognize what they are thinking when they are upset. An overly strong emotional reaction to an event suggests that a person is having some biased, upsetting thoughts. CBT increases people’s awareness of these thoughts and then helps them look at situations in a more objective manner. This objectivity improves mood and reduces anxiety, anger, shame, and guilt.

Behavioural activation (or, adding pleasant events into one’s life), behavioural experiments, exposure to feared situations, and social skills training are just some examples of the additional behavioural aspects of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) that are extremely helpful for recovery.

Children can use Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) as effectively as adults and quickly understand the principles of “stinking thinking” using age-appropriate examples. They learn to do detective thinking, for instance, to examine the evidence for some of their biased thoughts.

When working with children, we keep parents updated so they learn how to assist children in using their Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) tools. We also may suggest some parenting tips or some family therapy.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) includes Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), mindfulness meditation, and other effective elements and is a comprehensive therapy for people who have great difficulty in enduring and managing intense emotions